We have a HUGE teaching experience for the newbie investors who are working very hard to wholesale houses to us while they live out of state. Because these are issues that you may not know about from your GURU training, we wanted to share them with you.
Scenario: Out of state wholesale investor leaves us a message of a hot property in Blue Springs. She has just got the short sale approved and she wants to tell us about it.
GREAT!!
Learning Item #1: The Use of Voice Mail
Wholesaler left us a message after hours yesterday so we called this morning and of course got her voice mail. We left a message. Then we went on to other calls. She called back and got our voice mail. Then called back again 2 minutes later.
First, if you leave us a message we will call you back, no need to call us in 2 minutes.
Second, if you call and leave us a message, you might reference an email that you are going to send out with the details so we can look for the email. Save yourself countless hours of phone tag by using email. Something like, Hey Don, I have a hot Blue Springs Property, I will email you the details to your email at Don@kcmoHomeBuyer.com, please call or email me back for more information.
See, we can then go to the email, click the link, look at the photos, do your comps and NO PHONE TAG.
Learning Item #2: We Don’t Buy Properties that are selling to us from the MLS
If you are scouring the MLS to make offers and find deals and then you want to wholesale them to us, save your time. We don’t buy MLS because we are buying houses to wholesale or sell to the end buyer and having a paper trail on MLS makes it tough for us to resell. It may be that some investor’s will buy houses in this fashion, but most do not.
Learning Item #3: We Don’t Buy Pools
If you are not in Kansas City you may not realize that investors do not like pools – that’s inground pools you swim in, not pools of properties, especially in the winter time.
Landlords do not want a pool because of the cost of maintaining the pool or the liability they would have with tenants in a home with a pool, plus the insurance cost would be too high.
Most rehabbers don’t want a pool because of the cost of getting it fixed and because it limits the number of owner occupant buyers who would want to buy it.
Plus if you are buying a house in Kansas City with a pool and the home is vacant who knows if the pool works or if it needs major repair. And if it is winter, the pool needs winterized right now so the freezing does not damage everything. You should also make sure the sprinkler system and the plumbing system is also winterized.
So if it is an in ground pool, the average landlord will not want to purchase and if it is above ground, the average investor buyer would budget to have it removed and thrown away and the yard put back together.
Learning Item #4: Rental Area
On this particular property that we were called about, it is in an area where most retail homes are sold in the $110,000 to $120,000 price range. And in the particular area neighborhoods where prices are $120,000 and lower, have a lot of rental. The lower in price you go, the higher the number of rentals you will find.
So if you are working in a $120,000 price range in the Kansas City area, there will be owner occupant buyers. There will be a lot of landlord buyers as well. And there will be a lot of lease to own buyers.
In this particular scenario, the neighborhood has a high number of rentals. Owner Occupants will buy in this area, but the primary buyer is going to be the landlord buyer. And a landlord buyer will want a good price and no pool.
For this scenario, that is on MLS, the average buyer is going to be a landlord who would be buying the house to rent or sell lease to own. Because the pool is above ground, they might go ahead and buy it with the pool if priced well enough to budget in the maintenance of the pool and sell lease to own. Or if they were going to rent the house out as a straight rental, they would probably want to remove the pool.
What would you do with this type of deal?